Narciso Yepes

Narciso Yepes is one of those musicians who makes you stop whatever you're doing the moment he starts playing — there's a gravity to his tone that nobody else quite had. Born in Lorca, Spain in 1927, he became famous worldwide after his recording of Rodrigo's Concierto de Aranjuez in 1954, a performance that still sounds definitive decades later. What I find most fascinating about Yepes is his obsession with acoustic science: he commissioned a ten-string guitar so he could achieve natural resonance on notes that the standard six-string simply can't sustain properly. That's not a gimmick — that's a craftsman refusing to accept a limitation. His film work, including the haunting theme for Forbidden Games, showed he could reach mass audiences without dumbing anything down. An absolute giant, gone too soon in 1997.

Name (English)

Narciso Yepes

Name (Japanese)

ナルシソ・イエペス

Reading

なるしそ・いえぺす

Born

November 14, 1927 – May 3, 1997

Zodiac / Chinese zodiac

Scorpio / Rabbit

Origin

Lorca, Region of Murcia, Spain

Occupation

guitarist / composer / lutenist / classical guitarist / film score composer

Awards & achievements

• 1980 Gold Medal of Merit in the Fine Arts
• 1977 honorary doctorate of the University of Murcia

Motto

Private

• Official sitehttp://www.narcisoyepes.org//
• Wikipedia (Japanese)https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E3%83%8A%E3%83%AB%E3%82%B7%E3%82%BD%E3%83%BB%E3%82%A4%E3%82%A8%E3%83%9A%E3%82%B9

Tags

• Region of Murcia
• guitarist
• composer
• lutenist

Last updated

2026-06-02

Facts are limited to publicly available information up to 2024; non-public or unconfirmed items are omitted. English text is machine-assisted (facts translated by Sonnet, "My Take" written by Opus 4.8). The Japanese page is the source of record.